Majority opinion and the left
Posted on Monday 23 July, 2007
Filed Under Politics
Attitudes horribly reminiscent of class politics remain rather more widespread than the Financial Times would like, a new international opinion poll reveals:
Large majorities of people in the US and in Europe want higher taxation for the rich and even pay caps for corporate executives to counter what they believe are unjustified rewards and the negative effects of globalisation …
… 5 per cent or fewer of those polled in the US and all large European economies (except Italy) [said] they had a great deal of admiration for those who run large companies. In these countries, between a third and a half said they had no admiration at all for corporate bosses.
In response to fears of globalisation and rising inequality, the public in all the rich countries surveyed – the US, Germany, UK, France, Italy and Spain – want their governments to increase taxation on those with the highest incomes. In European countries, a large majority want governments to go further and to impose pay caps on the heads of companies.
These findings are an instant answer to those who argue that there is no potential popular base for leftwing politics. The ‘them and us’ mentality hasn’t gone away. Progressive taxation – much like social ownership of major utilities – remains in line with majority public opinion.
In a democracy, majority public opinion is supposed to prevail. It is an illustration of just how far all mainstream parties have come to identify exclusively with the business interest that even such basic social democratic notions no longer get a look in.
It would be interesting to get a backset of this data. Was there ever a time when privatisation, fat cattery and general neoliberalism enjoyed widespread backing? I rather suspect the answer is no.
In short, the British left could not ask for more favourable conditions to make the wider case for entry level basic Marxist ideas, centred on the existence of separate classes and their irreconcilable interests. Why aren’t I surprised that it continues to fluff the task?
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23 Responses to “Majority opinion and the left”
I suppose the Blairite/Brownite(?) response to this would be to claim that these sorts of measures would drive substantial amounts of investment away from the country and that, therefore, despite public support for salary caps and progressive taxation it would not be in the interests of the majority for such measures to be implemented (given that it would lower living standards).
Maybe I’m too pessimistic, but I think there’s a kernel of truth to this neo-liberal line – that is, under intensified global competition and relatively low rates of profit (compared to the years of the Keynesian consensus) left-wing measures would rapidly bring the government implementing them into serious conflict with big business. Without a socialist perspective and without the willingness to go further and deliberately take on and defeat big business interests, these sorts of policies may well back-fire. Am I being to pessimistic about the scope for social democratic politics today?
In what ways do you think the left “fluffs the task” here Dave, and how would you “unfluff it”, as it were?
Not a rhetorical question, I’m interested in where people think we’re falling short (which we undoubtedly are, in many ways, though there’s sometimes too much of a tendency towards hairshirtist self-denunciation)
Tom, East London wrote:
In what ways do you think the left “fluffs the task” here Dave, and how would you “unfluff it”, as it were?
I will have a stab at answering that question, until the Left become relevant their ideas win’t be taken up (I think Lenin said a similar thing around the 1900s), until the Left can mount a broad-based mass campaign (preferably, in my view, for renewed public ownership (renationalisation, etc)) then it won’t get very far
the Left probably comes across to the vast majority of people as a pile of cranks or devious politicos, so until the Left can actually do something, rather than talking about the 4th/5th/6th international and Trotsky’s naval, then it will remain much as it is, largely irrelevant
doing something tangible that is relevant to most people’s existence is the best way for the Left increase its influence and achieve something
however, as a chunk of the Left is still stuck in the sectarian ghettos of the 1990s or in the case of the SWP praising any murderous “anti-imperialist” in far-away lands, the Left still has a major “image” problem,
give it about 50-80 years and then they might, just might get their act together
Pretty bloody obvious if you ask me. Look at the record of Leninism. People would rather live in an unequal society than be equal (or dead) in a prison camp.
Everyday that the far left fails to comes to terms with its record in power is a day when it becomes less relevant to anybody but the historians.
After all, Trotsky and Stalin were equally enthusiastic in branding those they wished to shoot as “class enemies” (obviously “objectively” when it came to butchering workers who’d done no more than ask for their rights back).
I’m sceptical that “nationalisation” (a term with which an almost entire generation would now not be that familiar) would be much of a rallying call, to be honest, however justified the need for public ownership of essential utilities is. Which it is. And we should call it “public ownership”, not nationalisation – we should argue for something better than the old centralised statist model. But do you really reckon a mass demo on this issue would get the numbers out?
I think the basics of a living wage (crap working conditions), housing and general public amenities would be a better building block.
And yeah, we need to go beyond – and better than – Leninism as well as (it goes without saying) Blairism.
A clever fellow once observed that conditions determine conciousness.
Despite everything, a basic socialist conciousness still exists amongst the broad mass of the population… because of their experience of the reality of class society.
The very idea of an alternative to capitalism is revolutionary in itself.
On a global scale it looks like things are starting to shift, the movement in Latin America could provide the missing ingredient; that there is a viable alternative to rampant neo-liberalism.
Class consciousness, unsurprisingly, does exist, people would be downright stupid not to know precisely where they stand.
There are, however, absolutely no poles it can organise around in the absence of relevant and powerful unions, a transparent, democratic Labour Party rather than the carefully coralled plaything of the middle classes that passes for it nowadays or even simple community cohesion now that everybody shops and plays (if at all) outside their local area.
Also, class consciousness is studiously illegitimised across the media, is there a socialist voice of any stripe from one end of Fleet Street (as was) to the other, for instance? Let alone television or radio. This, I think, matters more than it ought to.
I think capitalism permits a certain ‘licensed dissent’ in the form of token socialistic voices in certain media at certain times, as a self-consciously ‘alternative’ (but harmless) voice. With the clear implication that they’re ‘offbeat’ and not to be taken seriously.
One thing we do have to come to terms with is that, at present, though class and class consciousness still exists and matters, far too many people have a stake in “the system” as it currently stands to attempt to overthrow it or even jolt it. This is a product of our high-debt, heavily-mortgaged, “property owning democracy” (self included), Now that is a precarious system, but while sufficient numbers still feel they’ve a big enough stake in it to not rock the boat, we’ll have an uphill task.
The fact that hundreds of thousands of working class people are presently without water, electricity, are seing their homes being ruined and their belongings destroyed does seem to me to open up the possibility of a dialogue socialists are not normally in a position to start. One could talk about the need for planning, investment in infrastructure, and the inadequacy of Brown’s neo-liberalism to meet a crisis like this. But we lack a big enough organisation to articulate all this to meaningful numbers of people.
Tom,
you’re right, I was writing shorthand, I think that a major campaign something like the “Campaign for Public Ownership”, which repudiates Thatcher’s privatisation, PFI and the other shenanigans is a tangible political issue
ask yourself the simple question: given the state of the public utilities, who seriously argues that privatisation is good?
privatisation is held in contempt by a wide swathes of people, from the embittered commuter cheesed off with dirty poor trains, to customers of utilities paying through the nose for effective monopolies (water and electricity)
there’s a lot to flesh out, but I think less esoteric issues (campaign for the new workers party, etc) and more down-to-earth street politics is the way to invigorate the Left
I would like to think it’s possible, but I believe the social composition, political background (student politics) and heritage of most of the leaders of the Left preclude it, still you never know (never say never in politics!)
Last of the Blairites:
I suggest you actually read a little bit about Soviet society if you think that it involved ‘equality’. There were in fact many different stratifications of income and status. The idea that greater equality means the gulag marks you out as firmly right-wing. I’m reminded of Churchill’s quote about Labour at the 1945 election when he said socialism would require ‘some sort of gestapo’. Fuhrer Attlee didn’t prove to be too bloodthirsty.
Igor,
I obviously did not express my point clearly. My apologies.
What I mean is that the left’s class war rhetoric – and the record of those societies where cpaital was abolished – mean that people, not unreasonably, prefer the inequality of capitalism and the class society than the GuLag.
And you obviously miss the point about social democrats. The reason Churchill’s comments are so offensive is because they are aimed at a social democrat – not a Leninist.
If aimed at a Leninist they’d be pretty understandable (read Life and Fate for more on that one).
Yes, but we have no opinion polls to state whether Russians preferred the Soviet Union to the Tsarist Empire, or whether Cubans have like Castro’s regime more than Batista’s. We aren’t talking about 3rd World Communist countries, but the modern industrialised world. Are you suggesting there’s no chance of greater equality there or that different visions of society can’t take root? If so then you sound dangerously like Thatcher and her ‘There is no alternative’ rhetoric.
And I would suggest that many of the people who suffer in ‘Life and Fate’ are in fact ‘Leninists’. It does tend to be forgotten that Stalin killed more Communists than anyone else in history.
Modernity, I agree with you about “street politics” and that there’s something there around public ownership that we can build on, but I think using some of these energies towards creating yet another new left party isn’t the best use of anyone’s time. At a time when not just political party membership, but political party identification, is on the decline, I really can’t see how setting up another one will meet anything other than the dismal fate of all the other new left parties set up since Blair hijacked the Labour party.
Tony Blair really could say ‘Apres moi, la Deluge.’.
I thought there would be a political crisis in the States after tyhe debacle of New Orleans, but it hasn’t happened. I suppose it’s such an enormous country thatpeople don’t identify with poor, black and white people at the opposite end of it. Looks like the PFI chicken is coming home to roost, with hospitals sacking hundreds of staff and wards closing. Still, the problem is that there is no reasonably visible oppisition group. The SWP is just a joke now. It’s scandalous that a proper campaign against the Iraq War has never been mounted.
And I would suggest that many of the people who suffer in ‘Life and Fate’ are in fact ‘Leninists’. It does tend to be forgotten that Stalin killed more Communists than anyone else in history.
Have you read the book? The comment suggests either you haven’t or you’ve missed the point of it.
Mao probably killed more, actually.
In both cases they were killed because they were “claas enemies” or agents thereof. And in 1940 that is just what Trotsky was accusing Stalin of being.
Yes, pray tell me exactly what Grossman saw ‘the point’ of the book to be? No doubt he told you personally over a cup of tea in Donetsk.
I thought the book was intended to be a realistic and broad-based depiction of life in Stalin’s Russia during World War 2. AS such it inevitably demonstrates the excesses of the regime as well as the general suffering of the war. As far as I’m aware it makes no analysis of ‘Leninism’, unless you’re confusing Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky. I would have that Trotsky opposing Stalin in 1940 wasn’t a bad thing- surely somebody who is murdering working people is generally an enemy of that class? Usually when somebody kills or urges the killing of another for political reasons then it’s because they are tagged as an enemy- much more convenient for Stalin to state that the old Bolsheviks were ‘class enemies’ rather than potential opponents of his personal rule.
You know, if we’re looking at where the left’s going wrong, we could do worse than starting at this tendency for so many of its own discussions to degenerate into arguments about what happened in the fucking Soviet Union 70 years ago. Which is, of course, just what the long-suffering working classes need.
Well, one of the problems might be that an insufficient amount of ‘the working classes’ consider themselves to be ‘long-suffering’. In fact, some of the better-off workers are those that complain most about ‘immigrants’, ‘scroungers’ and having to pay taxes.
Another problem might be comparing these modest floods to New Orleans. That is totally wet.
back to the launch post, it’s worth having a read of the Rowntree Foundation report on public attitudes to inequality.
http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/pdf/2097.pdf
Although the majority of people do think the gap between rich and poor is too great (although – surprise! – the richer you are the less likely you are to think so), only about a third support the Government redistributing more income, and the level of support for such intervention has fallen in recent years.
Tom, east London wrote:
this tendency for so many of its own discussions to degenerate into arguments about what happened in the fucking Soviet Union 70 years ago.
exactly!
Very interesting but shirley the idea that the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are ‘seperate classes’ is nonsense? Is it not the case that these two social classes are in fact inextricably linked in the process of production? Indeed is it not a fact that for Marxists the entire purpose of the class struggle is the negation of the very idea of classes including the proletariat?